Additive manufacturing is becoming a more accepted method to produce goods due to reduced stream of waste and increased material utilization efficiency. Electronic circuits are particularly able to realize the benefits of additive manufacturing using a direct printing method. Direct printing, of electronic circuits requires specialty inks made from metallic particles that can be easily applied with various printing methods. All printed metallic inks based on metal particles must be sintered to transition from individual particles in the stabilized ink formulation to a conductive film material suitable fir use in the end product.
Nanoparticle inks are utilized for the printed electronics industry. However, nanoparticles are expensive compared to larger, submicron and micron-sized particles. The use of these size particles is limited in applications such as electronic interconnects, membrane switch conduction layers, radio-frequency ID tags, displays and other applications due to the lack of suitable processing, procedures to convert the particles to a conductive film.